Den Of Geek: Dark Void (360) Review

The duration of videogames is a common subject in genre criticism; reviewers, developers and marketeers will frequently cite a game's lengthy campaign as a sign of value for money, and in most cases this reasoning is sound. But can a game, like a needlessly overblown cinematic epic, outstay its welcome? Can a game drag on for so long that, as you sit on your sofa both bleary eyed and sore of thumb, you begin to wish the whole sorry enterprise would stop?

It's a question I repeatedly asked myself as I ploughed through Dark Void. Like the 30s pulp literature and B-movie cinema from which it draws inspiration, Dark Void is a grab bag of genres, themes and ideas, games as apparently disparate as Gears Of War, hoary SNES shooter Starwing and Quake are all thrown together to create an unexpectedly odd SF action-adventure.